Rocky Mountain High School senior Rylee Bundy (4) celebrates with teammates Olivia Stutzman (11) and Riley Ostler (14) after scoring the only goal in a second round 5A playoff win over Fairview High School on Friday, May 11, 2018, at French Field in Fort Collins, Colo.(Photo: Timothy Hurst/The Coloradoan)Buy Photo

Rocky Mountain High School girls soccer coach Ron Clark had his Lobos practice time and again free kick situations, until late Thursday afternoon.

Twenty-four hours later, the practice paid off.

Senior Rylee Bundy scored on a rebound off a free kick from senior Savannah Warner — with senior Riley Ostler cutting in front of the kick to distract the goalie — with just less than 9 minutes left in Friday's second round of the Class 5A state tournament at French Field. The goal lifted the Lobos past Fairview to win the game 1-0.

"We have been practicing our corner and free kicks a lot, especially since last time when we kind of got embarrassed by them at their house (2-0 loss),'' Clark said. "We buckled down in practice and were here past 5 last night practicing this very situation. Nice to see it work the way we practiced it.''

Fairview sophomore goalie Hayden Velds made a nice two-handed save to her left off the free kick. But the ricochet bounced back in front of the net and Bundy beat a Fairview defender to bury the game-winner.

"When I saw it, I knew was mine and that I was going to put it in the back of the net,'' said Bundy, who notched her fourth goal of the season. I saw the vision of the net and it hit the net. It felt so good.''

The No. 8-seed Lobos (14-2-1) will play No. 1 seed Grandview, who beat No. 17 seed Boulder 6-0. The quarterfinal game will be played Wednesday with Grandview hosting. The Lobos tied Grandview (14-0-3) 0-0 during the regular season.

Rocky Mountain allowed the fewest goals in 5A — four — half of which came in a 2-0 loss to Fairview in the final game of the regular season.

The Lobos had a chip on their shoulder coming into Friday's game and used it to their advantage.

"They were the better team that day,'' senior Kendall Furrow said of Fairview. "We didn't play as a team that day, but we did today. We had each other's back the entire game. We said we don't have to be perfect all the time but we have to give perfect effort all the time, and we did that today.''

Even though Clark and the Lobos players said they didn't fully believe it was game over when Bundy scored, they had a good feeling.

"I said at halftime if we scored a goal I felt pretty good,'' Clark said. "But when Riley scored, I cried a little bit. I'm not proud, I did. They just fought so hard tonight against a good Fairview team.''

The Lobos had three quality shots in a 5½-minute span just before the game-winner. Clark said he could sense they might crack the scoreless game.

"We were starting to break them a little bit,'' he said. "I've been in this game a long time and it can go the other way, but I had that feeling that we could break them.''

And when they did, it felt oh so good.

"It was a big relief,'' Furrow said. "We could finally take a second breath. There was 8 minutes left and we knew it wasn't over until the whistle blew, but it took a lot of pressure off of us.''

It was the team's second 1-0 win in the playoffs, The Lobos beat Arvada West in the first round.